Why Scotland should look to Denmark for solutions to modern world's 'wicked' problems

They came together to talk about complex ‘wicked’ issues, from delivering energy-efficient housing and improving the justice system to supplying clean water and addressing climate impacts in a country with 13 million pigs and five million people. They spoke about how they had addressed them or were going to tackle them, and learned about how collaboratively to improve or transform them.

Financially, Denmark is in a different position from Scotland. It has decades of social investment and a culture of local-level conversations with people affected by the issues and a meaningful stake in driving better outcomes. It has problems, but they don’t feel like the burning platform that we often seem to encounter which typically prompts urgent calls for action.

Yes, their prison population has risen – their remand rate is also affected by backlogs in the court system, and yes, they have a cohort of young people who are not in employment or further education despite having many jobs available for people. But barring the environmental crisis, many of their challenges feel more manageable and ripe for change.

Radical ideas

The conversation I participated in didn’t start with needing more money (we can spend money on the wrong things), it started with accepting that to change a system, the actors – read ‘the professionals’ – must first admit that they don’t know how to change it. Only when that happens can you engage on a path of innovation and system change. Only from a place of humility, acknowledging that you don’t know all the answers, can you truly open your mind to big, radical ideas.

All the words about the human tragedy of deaths from drugs in Scotland have been written. And in this column – and elsewhere – the challenges of the justice system have been laid out frequently and repeatedly. We are all meant to know what to do to make it better and not worse, and in many small ways we do. But in the face of the most terrible problems, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to lead to the transformation we desperately need and want.

Best use of talent and money

We don’t have the system innovation infrastructure of Denmark or the volume of people who get the time, space and funding to bring about radical change at scale, involving local people systematically, and as a matter of course, at every step in the process.

There are organisations in Scotland, small and large, which get some opportunities to do this and, done well, it can make a difference. As we career forward into an uncertain financial future, we need a Danish-style approach, used by more institutions, if we are to make best use of the money, resources and talent available in order to deliver the change we really need.

The first step, taking a leaf from Denmark, is to admit that we don’t have many of the answers, at least not right now. We need to swallow our ego, be more humble and look around at the world afresh.

Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland